How dangerous are piranhas? Piranha. Legends and reality How many people died from piranhas

Probably there will not be a person who has not heard about this tropical fish. In terms of the number of legends and rumors, only another legendary predator, the shark, can compete with the piranha.

After I started breeding piranhas, I was interested in any information about this fish. I was struck by the inconsistency of the information. Some argue that just dip your hand into the river with piranhas - you will pull it out gnawed to the bone. Others argue that throughout the Amazon, people fish in rivers, swim, wash clothes, and there have been no reliable cases of mass attacks of piranhas on humans. The more competent the source, the more often the second point of view is defended.

Watching the piranha for more than 10 years, I was repeatedly convinced that the piranha eats little. For feeding a large piranha that has not been fed for 2 days, 25-40 g of meat or fish is enough. When satiated, the piranha instantly stops eating, even if there is a small tidbit left. The Amazon is known to be very rich in fish. Therefore, I can hardly imagine a hungry piranha in a river rich in fish. In addition, the piranha is shy. I have been working with my hands without fear for a long time in an aquarium with 3 dozen adult piranhas. At the same time, they are hammered into the opposite corner of the aquarium. For 10 years there was not even an attempt to attack.

Now, if a person approaches in the river to the spawning site guarded by the male, then here I am sure that the person will be attacked and bitten, but not eaten.
It is noteworthy that the piranha does not look like a formidable predator. When I saw young piranhas for the first time in Leningrad in 1992, I could not believe for a long time that this was the well-known predator Serrasalmus nattereri. Outwardly, they differed little from peaceful coin fish. Only after the purchase, the insidious teeth made themselves felt - a thick plastic bag in which I carried them to Kyiv was bitten in many places. Later, they got the hang of transporting them in double plastic bags, in which a newspaper was laid between the layers of polyethylene. Not just paper, but newspaper. The trick is that a bitten bag lets some water into the hole, slightly relieving pressure. The newspaper gets wet perfectly and this wet layer of the newspaper does not allow the pressure to drop after equalizing with atmospheric pressure. And in no case should the bags be placed on top of each other. Then, under the weight of the upper bag, all the oxygen from the lower one will come out. Even later, I began to use the transportation of piranha in plastic containers, which made it possible to remove all problems.

At the beginning of them appearance did not touch my heart, but when they grew up, I could admire them for hours. Their body became similar in color to well-groomed ancient silver. From dark gray to a shiny mirror with lots of bright sparkles. When well fed, their golden-orange abdomen turns into a red anal fin.

Look at this beauty. So far, I have not been able to get them to pose in all their glory because of their shyness.
And the youth is colored differently - a dozen or two black round spots are scattered on a light silvery body. There are two wide black vertical stripes on the tail - one along the root of the tail, the other borders the caudal fin. The anal fin is reddish.

And piranha is also characterized by the presence of an adipose fin, such as that of salmon. You can't tell a male from a female among young people. With a good content of piranhas, I began to ripen after 10 months. The females began to recruit eggs, the abdomen increased and the females could be distinguished. But with a male, it's more difficult. I read that the male has a sharper anal fin. I chose those in which it seemed to be longer, but then it often turned out that the "male" had a growing belly. After a few years, of course, came the experience of easily distinguishing the male. They have different body proportions, the male seems to be compressed along a vertical line passing behind the upper fin.

Their behavior in the flock is interesting. If the flock has formed, it has a clear matriarchy. If you feed with pieces of meat or fish, alternately throwing them into the aquarium, then the “main mother” flies out first, followed by the next pieces of females of a lower rank, only at the end are males. Then the next round. An exception can be made for females that are gaining caviar, they eat more than others. The gallantry of the male, sitting before spawning with the female, is striking. As a rule, he will not touch food until the female is full.

It is better to keep piranhas at least a small, but a flock. Comfortable temperature 24-27 degrees. Amazingly, as it turned out, she can withstand very low temperatures. One amateur from Odessa gave me small piranhas by train. When I saw that the granny-guide was getting me a bag of fish from the refrigerator, my jaw dropped. It turns out that he told the conductor that he was "handing over the fish", and the zealous grandmother was not too lazy to put it in the refrigerator, "so that the fish does not deteriorate."

A large block of ice floated in the bag in the remains of the water. In complete shock, I arrived at my divorce and, putting the package to defrost in the washbasin, I went about my daily chores. A few hours later, when I went to wash my hands, I noticed a stir in the bag. Opening the bag, I saw a moving piranha among the corpses. All the employees came to see. We urgently developed a plan of measures for rehabilitation. And she survived. There are witnesses for that.
This amazing fish has another rare gift. Amazing restoration of bitten off parts of your body. When growing teenagers, they often bite each other, up to complete eating (although the heads remain). It's the law of nature - it's coming natural selection. Almost every day we have to remove the injured from a large flock of young animals. Some had pieces of meat snatched to the very bones. The lack of fins did not count. Many were missing eyes. After a few weeks, the wounds completely healed, leaving no trace in most cases. More difficult with the eyes. Such fish remained on the draw, the hand did not rise to throw it away. The eye pit was slowly tightened and the fish grew normally. Even disabled people without both eyes normally find food.

About aquariums for piranhas. Experience shows that a piranha aquarium places high demands on the aquarium environment. Piranhas are very afraid of external stimuli: noise, shadows. With even a slight click on the glass or a sharp movement along the aquarium, piranhas can rush away in a panic, sweeping away everything in their path. Or even fall in shock to the bottom without moving.

If the place is chosen well, then they do not harm the plants even in a densely planted aquarium. Sometimes I am amazed at how smoothly and gracefully this colossus passes through dense thickets without leaving a trace. The only thing you need to understand is that there should be an open area for food. Piranhas look good in aquariums with shelters. They feel great in shelters, only slightly sticking their heads out.

And now about the fish, with which you can perfectly keep adult piranhas. First, with a small characin (neons, minors, ternations, etc.). They won't touch them.

Already having such experience, I offered piranhas with a large flock of neons to one office aquarium, persuading me that there would be no problems. Six months later, they called about the beginning of the loss of neon. As it turned out, it was not the piranhas that ate the neon, but the grown brocade pterygoplicht. From my own experience, I can expand the list of fish: guppies, platies, mollies, Sumatran barbs, zebrafish, various small catfish. Goldfish are completely unsuitable for neighbors, especially veil breeds. Piranhas immediately start hunting, even if they are full. I was especially surprised by the destruction of piranha teenagers, their own children, planted in an aquarium with adults. Probably again, nature has created some kind of mechanism that is still incomprehensible to me. They also start hunting for large loach-like ones. In general, this is an exciting, albeit eerie, spectacle - piranha hunting. In January-February, we sell buckets of live loaches. This is an excellent food for piranhas. The loach released into the aquarium begins to examine it, not paying attention to the piranhas. And those, like a herd of wolves, begin to move, at first slowly, then turning into a swift pursuit. Then a throw, and the piranhas spread out to chew on the pieces.

Loaches are a delicacy, and regularly feed conveniently frozen sea fish, beef heart. For a couple of years I had the opportunity to buy cheap Black Sea shrimp. They peeped it beautifully, spitting out the heads, like real traders on the Odessa Privoz.

The main rule when feeding piranhas is not to overfeed and immediately remove the remnants of food, they will not pick them up.

Breeding piranhas is a separate issue. Trying to make the first spawning, A.B. Nikolaev and I had absolutely no information. What tricks we just didn’t do until we picked up the conditions for spawning. Of course, as with most people in the Amazon, spawning in soft, acidic water gives good results. Under these conditions, the yield of the larvae is much greater. As a rule, males have a good degree of fertilization. The main point in obtaining fry is not to lose the moment when the larva begins to feed and provide it with a sufficient amount of food. I always chose rotifers as a starter food, then brine shrimp nauplii.

The fry grow extremely quickly and by the month, with proper feeding, reach 2-2.5 cm. But you need spacious aquariums. To grow fish from the spawning of one pair, you need aquariums with a total capacity of 3-4 thousand liters. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to do this at home. But interest in them is growing. There are more and more aquarists who have comprehended this difficult task.

At one time, our country was one of the largest exporters of piranha. They were delivered to Poland, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Turkey, Bulgaria.
Now, unfortunately, many breeders have abandoned this business.

Popular films scare the public with the image of a bloody school of fish, bringing death and devouring people not even by tens, but by hundreds. Meanwhile, there is not a single fact of the death of a person from the teeth of piranhas! Yes, there have been bites. Most often, when the curious put their fingers into the aquarium. But to call the unfortunate fish cannibals is already too much.

Many scientists who have been living on the shores of the Amazon for decades and studying its flora and fauna confirm that during their entire stay they have never seen a person seriously injured by piranhas.

Piranhas attack in a pack.Piranhas attack only in a flock, no, this is not so, in fact, everything has been proven by the same scientists - piranhas organize groups solely for the purpose of protection!

These little fish often suffer from attacks. large predators, so instinct forced them to unite with their brethren in order to fight back and survive.

Piranhas are crazy about fresh blood, and prey on any creature that inadvertently ended up in the river

Yes, the smell of blood makes these fish excited. As, however, and any predator in wildlife. Try to wave your bloody hand in front of a lion's nose - the animal is unlikely to remain unperturbed. Even peaceful cows go on a rampage at the sight and smell of blood. However, this trait is usually attributed to piranhas. about attacks on people cattle other story.

Expert opinion

By their nature, piranhas are orderlies who perform a noble function and rid the waters of the Amazon from carrion. These fish feed on dead and dying animals, and never attack someone who can fight back.

In famine years, there were cases when piranhas could, out of desperation, hunt even sleeping crocodiles and their own relatives. But what wild animal, especially a predator, would do otherwise?

Where did the legend come from?

Do piranhas eat people? Of course not, this is another myth invented by man. Theodore Roosevelt was responsible for the terrible reputation of piranhas. When the president was touring the Amazon, the locals decided to shock him with a cruel performance. They gathered hundreds of piranhas and kept them without food for several days, and then, in the presence of Roosevelt, drove a cow into the water to the fish, distraught with hunger. Naturally, almost nothing was left of that in a matter of minutes. And the president spoke about the bloodthirstiness of "these creatures" to the whole world. People set up a cruel experiment for their own amusement, and managed to blame innocent creatures for this. That's the whole "terrible" secret of piranhas.

Piranha is known for its aggressiveness, so its danger to humans is not in doubt. A flock of these fish is capable of leaving only a skeleton of their prey in a few seconds, without exaggeration. Thanks to its teeth, the fish can easily cling to any prey and tear off a piece from it. Every year, approximately 80 people suffer from piranha bites, despite the fact that only a few prey on warm-blooded mammals, in particular, "red" and "black".

Wounds left after piranha teeth are always serious, and never heal completely. Many are left without body parts - a finger or a hand. But, in fact, up to 50 grams of meat is enough for one fish to get enough. According to recent studies, their aggressiveness is also exaggerated. They don't attack anything that gets in their way. Their period of bloodthirstiness falls on the time of spawning and the dry period. In other cases, this fish is unusually cowardly, and would rather swim away from danger than fight it. So, in the rainy season, when the water level rises by 15 meters, and the flooded forests become a real feast for piranhas, the locals calmly climb into the water. Unless, of course, they have a bleeding wound. To date, not a single case has been recorded when a piranha ate a person.

How dangerous are piranhas?

These fish have long been infamous. It is considered right. They are hungry for murder and greedy for blood. Their appetite is insatiable, a flock of piranhas quickly gnaws the carcass of a pig or a ram, deftly tearing the meat from the bones.

However, not all types of piranha are so scary. Some of them are harmless. How do you know what to expect muddy water rivers? The Indians have their own signs.

The victim had no chance. As soon as the trout and the pool, where the piranhas were splashing, flocks of enemies rushed at her, it didn’t take even a second, as one of the fish plucked a whole piece from the side of the trout. It was a signal. Spurred on by the hunting instinct, six other piranhas began tearing new pieces out of the trout's body.

Now her stomach was torn. She twitched, trying to dodge, but another squad of assassins - there were now about twenty of them - grabbed the fugitive. A cloud of blood mingled with scraps of innards floated in the water. The trout was no longer visible, and the furious predators kept scurrying about in the muddy water, poking their noses at the invisible outline of the fish.

Suddenly, after some half a minute, the haze passed. The piranhas have calmed down. The desire to kill subsided. Their movements slowed down. From the trout, a fish 30 cm long, there was no trace left.

Common piranha (Pygocentrus nattereri)

Genre classic: vampire and piranha

If you happen to see a piranha hunting in a movie, you will not forget this nightmarish scene. At one sight of it, ancient fears resurrect in the soul of a person. Fragments of old legends revolve in my memory: “It happened on the Rio Negro. Or Rio San Francisco, Xingu, Araguaia... My father fell into the water..."

From Alfred Brem to Igor Akimushkin, animal books are full of tales of bloodthirsty piranhas. “Very often a crocodile takes flight before a wild flock of these fish ... Often these fish overpower even a bull or a tapir ... Dobritzhofer says that two Spanish soldiers ... were attacked and torn to pieces” (A Brem). These messages have become "classics of the genre." From now on, every high school student knew that the rivers of Brazil were teeming with killer fish.

Over time, flocks of fish swam from books and articles to cinema halls. Horror films made about Amazonian predators include Piranha (1978) directed by Joe Dante and Piranha 2 (1981) directed by James Cameron.

Their plots are similar. On the shore of a picturesque lake military base. They grow piranhas there. Accidentally predators fall into the waters of the lake and begin to eat tourists. And in general, the same “Jaws”, only smaller in size, and more in number.

Her name alone makes fans of these films shudder. And hardly any of the experts creepy stories, once in Brazil, will risk entering the waters of the river if he finds out that piranhas are found there.

The first reports of them began to arrive when the conquistadors reached Brazil and went deep into the wilds of the forests. These messages made my blood run cold.

“The Indians, wounded by cannonballs and musket bullets, fell screaming from their canoes into the river, and ferocious piranhas gnawed them to the bone,” wrote a certain Spanish monk who accompanied Gonzalo Pizarro, a seeker of gold and adventures in 1553, during a predatory campaign and lower reaches Amazons. (Horrified by the cruelty of the fish, the pious monk did not think that the Spaniards, who fired cannons at the Indians, were no more merciful than piranhas.)

Since then, the reputation of these fish has been justifiably fearsome. They smelled blood better than sharks. Here is what the German traveler Karl-Ferdinand Appun wrote in 1859 to Guyana: “Intending to take a bath, I only immersed my body in warm waters river, as if headlong jumped out of there and retreated to the shore, because I felt a bite of a piranha on my thigh - just where there was a wound from a mosquito bite, scratched by me to the blood.

Reading such confessions, at some point you catch yourself thinking that piranhas are fiends of hell that escaped from there through an oversight and now tyrannize people and animals. There are no more terrible creatures in the world. An awkward step into the water - and dozens of razor-sharp teeth dig into your leg. God righteous! One skeleton remained... Is it all true?

The golden mean: flooded forest and great land

“It would be naive to demonize piranhas,” writes German zoologist Wolfgang Schulte, author of the recently published book Piranhas. For about 30 years he studied these tropical predators and, like no one else, knows their two-faced nature: “But it would also be naive to portray them as harmless fish, completely not dangerous to humans. The truth lies in the middle."

Over 30 species of piranha live in South America. They feed mainly on small fish, shrimps, carrion and insects.

Only a few piranhas attack warm-blooded animals: among them, for example, red and black piranhas. But these fish are quick to reprisal. If a young heron, having fallen out of the nest, awkwardly flops into the water, “it is surrounded by a flock of piranhas,” writes V. Schulte, “and seconds later only feathers float on the water.”

Piranhas in the aquarium have lunch

He had seen similar scenes himself, although it was not easy to understand river battles meticulously. Even experts have difficulty distinguishing certain types piranhas, as the color of fish changes dramatically with age.

However, the most aggressive piranhas usually feed only on carrion. “They rarely attack living mammals or humans. As a rule, this happens during the dry season, when the fish habitat narrows sharply and there is not enough prey. They also attack individuals with bleeding wounds, ”explains Schulte. If the attack is successful and the victim spurts blood, all the piranhas scurrying nearby rush to her.

So, the aggressiveness of piranhas depends on the season. During the rainy season, the Amazon and Orinoco flood. The water level in them rises by about 15 meters. Rivers flood a vast area. Where the forest has recently grown, boats float, and the rower, having lowered the pole into the water, can reach the crown of the tree. Where the birds sang, the fish are silent.

The flooded forests become a breadbasket for piranhas. They have a great selection of food. The local Indians know this and, fearing nothing, climb into the water. Even children splash in the river, dispersing flocks of piranhas.

Piranha teeth are sharp

Indian children swim in the Orinoco River, teeming with piranhas

Along the fairway of the Orinoco, teeming with "killer fish", lovers of water skiing carelessly ride. Guides carrying tourists on boats do not hesitate to jump into the water, and right from under their feet, tourists catch piranhas with fishing rods.

Miracles and more! Predators behave more modestly than trained lions. But circus lions sometimes have an appetite.

In piranhas, the character changes when the great dry land comes. Then the rivers turn into streams. Their level drops sharply. Everywhere you can see "lagoons" - lakes and even puddles in which fish, caimans and river dolphins who became prisoners. Piranhas, cut off from the river, do not have enough food - they fuss and rush about.

Now they are ready to bite anything that moves. Any living creature that gets into the pond is immediately attacked. It is worth a cow or a horse to lower its muzzle into the lake to drink, as angry fish cling to its lips - they tear out the meat in pieces. Often piranhas even kill each other.

"During the drought, no one local will not dare to swim in such a reservoir, ”writes Wolfgang Schulte.

Skeleton in the waves of memory: the fisherman and the river

Harald Schultz, one of the best experts on the Amazon, wrote that in his 20 years in South America, he knew only seven people who were bitten by piranhas, and only one was seriously injured. It was Schultz, who lived among the Indians for a long time, who once came up with an anecdote, ridiculing the fears of Europeans, for whom death is hiding at every turn in the Amazon forests.

Until now, this anecdote wanders from one publication to another, often taken for granted.

“My father was then 15 years old. The Indians were chasing him, and he, running away from them, jumped into a canoe, but the boat was flimsy. She turned over, and he had to swim. He jumped ashore, but that's bad luck: he looks, and only a skeleton remains from him. But nothing more terrible happened to him.

Most often, fishermen become victims of piranhas, while they themselves hunt them. Indeed, in Brazil, piranhas are considered a delicacy. Catching them is easy: you just need to throw a hook tied to a wire into the water (the piranha will bite the usual fishing line) and pull it, depicting the fluttering of the victim.

Right there on the hook hangs a fish the size of a palm. If a fisherman attacks a flock of piranhas, then just know that you have time to throw a hook: every minute you can pull out a fish.

In the passion of hunting, it is easy to become a victim yourself. A piranha thrown out of the water wriggles wildly and gasps for air with its teeth. Taking it off the hook, you can lose your finger. Even dead, it would seem, piranhas are dangerous: the fish seems to have stopped moving, but touch its teeth - the mouth will shrink reflexively, like a trap.

Red pacu (Piaractus brachypomus) herbivorous piranha

How many adventurers who reached the shores of the Amazon or its tributaries lost their fingers in the old days just because they decided to catch fish for dinner. This is how legends were born.

In fact, what is the enemy of piranha at first glance? The fish seems inconspicuous and even dull. Her weapon is "sheathed", but as soon as she opens her mouth, the impression changes. The mouth of a piranha is studded with triangular, razor-sharp teeth resembling daggers. They are positioned so that they snap like a zipper on your clothes.

The manner of hunting inherent in piranha is also unusual (by the way, sharks seem to behave): having stumbled upon a victim, it instantly rushes at it and cuts off a piece of meat; swallowing it, immediately digs into the body again. Similarly, piranha attacks any prey.

Piranha species lunar metinnis (Metynnis luna Sore)

Flag piranha (Catoprion mento)

However, sometimes the piranha itself falls into someone else's mouth. In the rivers of America, she has many enemies: large predatory fish, caimans, herons, river dolphins and matamata freshwater turtles, which are also dangerous to humans. All of them, before swallowing a piranha, try to bite it more painfully to check if it is still alive.

“Swallowing a live piranha is like stuffing a working one into your stomach. circular saw”, — notes the American journalist Roy Sasser. Piranha is not the prophet Jonah, ready to patiently rest in the belly of a whale: she begins to bite and can kill the predator that caught her.

As already mentioned, the piranha has a superbly developed sense of smell - it smells blood in the water from afar. It is worth throwing bloody bait into the water, as piranhas swim from all over the river. However, we must not forget that the inhabitants of the Amazon and its tributaries can only rely on their sense of smell. The water in these rivers is so turbid that nothing can be seen ten centimeters away from you. It remains only to sniff or listen to prey. The sharper the scent, the higher the chances of survival.

Piranha's hearing is also excellent. Injured fish flounder desperately, generating high frequency waves. The piranhas catch them and swim towards the source of the sound.

However, piranhas cannot be called “insatiable killers”, as it has long been believed. English zoologist Richard Fox placed 25 goldfish in a pool where two piranhas were swimming. He expected that the predators would soon slaughter all the victims, like wolves that penetrated the sheepfold.

However, piranhas killed only one goldfish per day for two, fraternally dividing it in half. They did not deal with the victims for nothing, but killed only to eat.

However, miss rich booty- they didn’t want a flock of golden fish either. Therefore, on the very first day, piranhas bit off their fins. Now the helpless little fish, unable to swim on their own, swayed in the water like floats, tail up, head down. They were a living food supply for the huntresses. Day after day, they chose a new victim and, slowly, ate it.

Amazon "wolves" - friends of the Indians

At home, these predators are real orderlies of rivers (recall that wolves are also called orderlies of the forest). When rivers flood during the rainy season and entire forests are hidden under water, many animals do not have time to escape. Thousands of corpses roll on the waves, threatening to poison all living things around with their poison and cause an epidemic. If it were not for the agility of piranhas, eating these carcasses white to the bone, then people would die from seasonal epidemics in Brazil.

And not only seasonal! Twice a month, on the new moon and full moon, a particularly strong ("syzygy") tide begins: the waters of the Atlantic rush into the depths of the mainland, rushing up the riverbeds. The Amazon begins to flow backwards, spilling over its banks.

Considering that every second the Amazon dumps up to 200 thousand cubic meters of water into the ocean, it is easy to imagine what a wall of water is rolling back. The river spills for miles.

The consequences of these regular floods are felt even 700 kilometers from the mouth of the Amazon. Small animals are killed again and again by them. Piranhas, like kites, clean the entire area from carrion, which otherwise would rot in the water for a long time. In addition, piranhas exterminate wounded and sick animals, healing the populations of their victims.

Pacu fish, a close relative of piranha, is a vegetarian at all - she is not a forest nurse, but a real arborist. With its powerful jaws, it gnaws nuts, helping their nucleoli to wake up in the soil. Floating through the flooded forest, she eats the fruits, and then, far from the place of the meal, she spews seeds, spreading them, as birds do.

Learning the habits of piranhas, one can only recall with bitterness that at one time the authorities of Brazil, falling under the terrible charm of legends, tried to do away with these fish once and for all and poisoned them with various poisons, simultaneously exterminating other inhabitants of the rivers.

Well, in the 20th century, man experienced "dizziness from progress." Without hesitation, we tried in our own way to establish a balance in nature, destroying natural mechanisms and each time suffering from the consequences.

natives South America have long learned to get along with piranhas and even made them their helpers. Many Indian tribes living along the banks of the Amazon do not bother digging graves during the rainy season to bury their relatives. They lower the dead body into the water, and piranhas, born gravediggers, will leave a little of the deceased.

The Guarani Indians wrap the deceased in a net with large cells and hang it over the side of the boat, waiting for the fish to scrape off all the flesh. Then they decorate the skeleton with feathers and honorably hide (“bury”) in one of the huts.

Black-sided piranha (Serrasalmus humeralis)

Since time immemorial, the jaws of piranhas have been replacing scissors for the Indians. When making arrows poisoned with curare poison, the Indians cut their tips with the teeth of piranhas. In the wound of the victim, such an arrow broke off, the more likely poisoning it.

There are many legends about piranhas. Villages and rivers in Brazil are named after them. In the cities, "piranhas" are called girls of easy virtue, ready to cleanly rob their victim.

Nowadays, piranhas have also begun to be found in the reservoirs of Europe and America. I remember that some tabloid newspapers also reported the appearance of "killer fish" in the Moscow region. It's all about the lovers of the exotic, who, starting at home unusual fish, can, having had enough of a "toy", throw them directly into a nearby pond or sewer.

However, there is no need to panic. The fate of piranhas in our climate is unenviable. These heat-loving animals quickly begin to get sick and die, and they will not survive the winter in open water at all. And they don't look like serial killers, as we have seen.

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